Even with this new awareness, Fearn knew that the sleeping arrangements of the previous night would, without the wine, be the usual way of things and that to make a fuss would be counter-productive. Perceptive as ever, Haesel tried to calm her fears, knowing more than anyone else of Barda’s ugly manners which, over the years, had made Fearn quite unable to show him any affection. As darkness approached and anchors had been dropped within sight of the shore, food was shared out and lanterns lit, men sitting in ‘rooms’ between the ship’s supports, eating, talking and singing. Haesel rigged up their curtain to provide some privacy as well as warmth, helping her mistress to comb her hair and remove girdle and pouch, shoes and jewellery.
‘My knife,’ Fearn whispered. ‘I think I might keep it with me, Haesel.’
Haesel placed a hand over hers. ‘No, you won’t need that.’
‘But you...did you...?’
‘Need a knife? No, lady. I was in no danger, nor will you be.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Listen. The man called Hrolf was with me, just as the Jarl was with you, but all he did was lie at my back and keep me warm with his arm. That’s all. They’re not going to do more than that here, are they? In this space?’
The picture of ‘more than that’ in the confined triangular area made them both smile, for although Haesel was a maid, the doings of lovers was no mystery to her. ‘Did he not try to kiss you?’ Fearn wanted to know.
‘No, not once. I was more awake than you. Most of my wine went into the sea. So you should take what comfort and warmth is offered you, lady. I saw the cloak and felt the winds, didn’t I? And that turned out to be so. But I’ve had no signs of you being hurt, so perhaps when he comes you should think of him as just another fur rug to keep you warm. One of those blond costly ones from the northern lands. You’ve always wanted one of those.’
‘I’m glad you’re with me. You say the funniest things.’
The gentle rocking of the ship on shallow waters soon lulled Haesel to sleep, but Fearn’s thoughts churned over and over as she fought with all the emotions of the past few days, ever since the news of the Vikings’ presence on the river. Twisting the gold ring on her little finger, her mother’s last gift, she could not prevent tears of sadness at the void left by her parents’ sudden departure, a sadness that had not abated since then. Pushing away the furs, she crept out on bare feet through the makeshift curtain on to the deck crowded with recumbent forms like long parcels of sealskin. The deck lifted and rocked beneath her feet and water slapped the sides of the ship as she leaned over the side to watch the moon’s reflections rippling like silver ribbons. She wiped a tear away before it fell, wondering if the moon was shining on her loved ones as it was on her, and how far she would be from them, in Denmark. Would Mother Bridget still be there in Jorvik when she returned? There had been no time for a proper farewell to the nuns. Lifting her head from her hands, she sensed a presence behind her. ‘You!’ she whispered. ‘No, leave me alone. Go away!’
‘Aloneness is in short supply on a ship,’ Aric said, quietly. ‘The best we can do is to try to help each other through the problem.’
‘Help?’ she croaked. She would like to have screamed and hammered at his wide chest for making such a useless offer. ‘Help? You are the one who created the problem and each day in your company makes it worse. You must know that.’
Stepping like a cat over a sleeping man’s feet, he came to stand by her side, leaning on the lower curve of the prow. ‘Tell me about them. Your parents.’
Angrily, Fearn stared at him. ‘How do you know I’m thinking of my parents, Dane?’
‘Well, you’d hardly be weeping for anyone else, would you? That husband of yours, his screeching mother, your foster mother and father? Don’t tell me you’re missing them already. And although I hardly created the problem of your parents, I am probably guilty of taking them out of your reach. Whereabouts are they, exactly?’
‘That is part of the problem. I don’t know where they are,’ she replied sharply.
He took a moment or two to accept this unlikely-sounding tale. ‘You really don’t know? Has Earl Thored never contacted them? Have you?’
‘From the day they were sent off, away from Jorvik, I have heard not one word. They may have died for all I know.’ Seeing things from a negative viewpoint came naturally to her just then. ‘How would I contact them?’ she whispered.
‘Don’t you know why they were banished?’
‘I was five. It may have been something to do with their faith, but I can’t be sure. My foster father was baptised, but I know it was only for political reasons, not because he truly believes. My father, Earl Oslac, was deeply committed. He would have been appalled at the idea of his daughter having to spend her days and nights with a Danish heathen, especially the one responsible for her husband’s death.’
‘I thought we had agreed, lady, that you are well rid of him. Perhaps your father might thank me for doing what he would not have been able to do. As for spending your days and nights with a Danish heathen, there must be worse things that could happen to you. Earl Thored would have chosen your second husband, I seem to remember. What’s more, you would have fared worse if you’d had bairns, for then you would have been parted from them, too, wouldn’t you? How long were you married to that man of Thored’s?’
‘If you are asking why there are no children, Dane, it’s both a mystery and a blessing to me, for he was not fit to be a father. If my own father had still been Earl, I would have been allowed to choose my own husband. Knowing what you do of him, can you wonder that I want a celibate life with the nuns where I can make use of my healing skills?’
‘No, I cannot wonder at it. But your body may tell you differently, in time.’
‘My body is my own to do with as I will. You should know this, Dane.’
By the light of the moon, his expression was fully revealed to her, serious and thoughtful, and as understanding as any man could be at the workings of a woman’s mind. ‘Interesting,’ he said, quietly. ‘And here was I, thinking that as a believer in the new religion, you would be bound to accept whatever your god wills for you.’
‘What my God wills, yes. Not necessarily what man wills. Men tend to confuse the two, as I have no doubt you will, too.’
‘Fortunately, lady, the issue is not one that concerns me. For one year I have taken over the responsibility for your body, ceded to me by Earl Thored. At the end of that year, you may be left wondering whether the experience was willed by your god or what you people call wyrd. Fate. Destiny. What will be. Isn’t that how they put it?’
‘Whoever or whatever willed it,’ she said, sharply, ‘it was not me.’
But as she spoke the words to him, face to face, the voice at the back of her mind cast doubts over them. Had she not willed it in some small degree, the voice told her, she would have fought him tooth and nail, used her knife to better effect, thrown herself over the side of the ship, anything to prevent the thraldom he was so intent on. There, in the darkness lit only dimly by the moon’s hazy glow, her senses were alive to his nearness, to the potent power of his masculinity, the aura of strength and virility that surrounded him like a mantle in which, she knew, he could swathe her, easily, in a manner beyond her experience. Her body’s responses were already giving the lie to her assertion, just as something in his manner told her he did not quite believe her, either. Her eyes slid away from his, unable to withstand his examination.
Turning from her, he took the curtain and lifted it high enough for her to bend beneath his hand and enter the dark space beyond, without question or protest. Immediately, he was beside her, moving her away from the cool wooden side towards the middle where the furs were peeled back, ready for her re-entry. Removing his boots and tunic, he pulled the furs up over them, laying his arm over the top of hers to pull the soft covering up, keeping it be
tween them.
Fearn could not move away without disturbing Haesel but, as the unfamiliar warmth of Aric’s bulk spread slowly into her back, the trembling of her body eventually lessened. Dark memories of Barda’s hot mead-reeking breath and fumbling hands on her breasts kept her alert for the slightest movement, but the Dane was perfectly still, if not altogether silent. ‘You have nothing to fear from me,’ he whispered close to her ear. ‘Tomorrow we should reach Lundenburh and meet the rest of the fleet, and our King Swein. He’s been negotiating with your King Ethelred.’
‘How best to fill your ships with English treasure, you mean,’ she whispered back.
‘Yes, I hope so.’
‘The Queen and I know each other. I wonder if we shall be allowed to meet.’
‘I don’t see why not. Remind me, what relation is she?’
‘None of mine. Queen Aelfgyfu is the only daughter of Earl Thored and his first wife, who died in childbirth. She and I were brought up by the Lady Hilda, his second, until Aelfgyfu was given in marriage to King Eethelred in 984. I was just fourteen and she was seventeen, the same age as her husband, poor girl.’
‘Why poor girl? Would you not be a king’s wife?’
‘Wife to a seventeen-year-old?’ she whispered, fiercely. ‘Having bairns one after the other until she’s worn out, for the sake of politics?’
‘In politics, a woman’s role is as peace-weaver. Is that not a worthy calling?’
‘I know you think it is, Dane. Elf was a dutiful daughter. She knew that the King must always have the Earls on his side and that the most binding link is to marry the daughter of one of them. Particularly when they’re as remote as Northumbria. And for the Earl to be able to say he’s the King’s father-in-law puts him in a very strong position. I missed her when she left. I still do. We were like sisters.’
‘Have you not been able to send messages to each other?’
‘We were both taught to write. We send letters whenever anyone travels to where the royal court is.’
‘So...you write? Well then, I got the best of the bargain when I took you instead of young Kean, didn’t I? In Latin and English?’ He felt the sudden pull of her shoulder as she turned back into the pillow, telling him that the conversation was at an end.
‘Patronising oaf!’ she muttered. ‘You suppose women are hen-brained?’
Still, he made no move and it was not long before the sound of her breathing and the relaxing of her body next to his told him that she slept. It was some time before he did the same, for now he had managed to find out more about this remarkable creature, and what a pity, he thought, that he had bargained for only one year of her life. Would it take that long to get her to accept him?
* * *
During the night, a stiff breeze blew the sea into waves beneath them, rocking the ship and gently throwing Fearn against the buffer of Aric’s body to be caught in his arms. Sleep became difficult. ‘Turn towards me,’ he said. ‘It’ll be more comfortable for you this way, lady.’
‘No...no! I can’t. I’m all right. I’d rather...’
‘You need to have more sleep. Come on, now. I’ve told you, you have nothing to fear from me. Trust me. I shall not touch you, except to keep you from rolling about.’
Reluctant, and still drowsy, she turned herself into his arms and felt them close around her, rolling her gently with him instead of against him, her head tucked beneath his chin. Cautiously, she lay a leg over the top of his to anchor herself and felt the soft leather of his breeches. He had told her to trust him and, though she could think of no reason why his word was any different from the three other men in her life who had let her down badly, she allowed herself to be rocked like a child until sleep returned. Her last ponderings were about the wyrd, the three sisters who spun out the thread of one’s life, measured it, then cut it and decided on the use to which it should be put. The priest at Jorvik had derided the notion. It was their God, he said, who decided that, not three mythical sisters. But Fearn thought, as did many others, that the priest would have to find a way of combining the two views, for she doubted that the notion of ‘what will be’ would ever fall out of favour, being so much easier to accept than God’s will and all its ambiguities. She dreamed of rocking a child in her arms, a dream so powerful that she felt the ache of emptiness deep inside her waiting to be fulfilled, and she half-woke, weeping, but was rocked to sleep again in Aric’s arms.
* * *
Under the command of Aric the Ruthless, the four longships reached Lundenburh just as the sun disappeared over the flat horizon ahead of them. From well inside the mouth of the Thames, the sails had been lowered and tied away in favour of the oars, making good speed with the tide to help them over the miles to where the huge Danish and Norwegian fleet lay at anchor. It had been a long and hard day’s sailing and the men were exhausted, but not enough to prevent the noisy celebrations at having won a massive pay-off from the dithering English King Ethelred, whose refusal to make a stand against the aggressors had his court tearing their hair out with frustration.
From where she and Haesel stood in the safety of their ship’s curving prow, Fearn could see Aric and his men laughing with a crowd of comrades, guessing that the jest was against the English. She had asked to be allowed to meet with Queen Aelfgyfu once more before her own departure from English shores and Aric had arranged it with his king, Swein Forkbeard, who had seen no harm at all in his trusted commander abducting a foster daughter of Earl Thored while fleecing him at the same time. If Aric thought that was a better deal than taking Thored’s own son, then one look at the woman in her crumpled finery told Swein all he needed to know about the probable reason.
Putting all associations with Barda aside, Fearn had decided to wear the beaver-fur cloak, partly because she was proud of having made it and partly to cover herself against the admiring stares of the Vikings who crowded the wharves of Lundenburh. A clean white veil covered her hair, held in place by the gold circlet studded with garnets, though the indigo-blue kirtle remained as testament to the conditions on board a shipload of men, still creased and muddied round the hem, and spotted with blood from Einar’s wounded foot. That morning, he had come to show her how, in one day and a night, all signs of the wound had completely vanished, a fact that he needed her to verify since he himself could scarcely believe it. Since then, she had been held in awe as one man after another was shown the healed foot and Aric realised that she was not only remarkable, but a singular asset to have at his disposal.
* * *
Night had fallen as Fearn and Haesel were escorted to the royal palace, a large timber-and wood-tiled building not unlike the great hall at Jorvik in size, but more embellished by carvings of dragons and intricate knotwork than the northern Earl’s. Guards, polished and businesslike, stood at every entrance to demand the identity of the guests whose escort had been provided by the Queen herself, as for the first time Fearn was able to appreciate the grandeur surrounding the dear friend whose letters never described her lifestyle, only domestic matters as if she were still only a nobleman’s daughter. Torches and beeswax candles threw light upon the colourful wall-hangings and shone upon the gold-threaded silken kirtles of the Queen’s ladies, shimmering as they moved.
As the heavy door opened, one lady passed her infant over to one of the others, coming forward with open arms and a happy smile to greet Fearn. ‘Dearest one,’ she whispered. ‘Ah, my dearest friend.’ Her arms closed about Fearn’s shoulders, holding her face to face to see how nine years of separation had treated her, while a wave of spicy perfume wafted between them.
‘Elf...oh, Elf, I’ve missed you so,’ Fearn whispered, searching the lovely face to refresh her memory, but seeing there a maturity imposed by years of childbirth and anxiety. ‘I never expected to be seeing you in this situation. What’s happening to us, Elf? These Danes are running circles round us.’
Hands reached up to caress faces, to find more detail through touch than mere eyes and voices could convey. Tears welled up and threatened to run down cheeks until embarrassed laughter stopped them, for it would not do to show this weakness before the court ladies. ‘What’s happening to you, more like,’ said the Queen. ‘The message I received was that the Lady Fearn was with the Danes and wished to see me. But surely my father has not allowed them to take you? Has he?’
Fearn nodded, letting Aelfgyfu lead her to one side where she sat upon a silk padded bench with Haesel beside her, telling what had happened over the last few days, including her new widowed state. The Queen sympathised, hugging Fearn as no one else had done for years. ‘It’s a relief,’ she said. ‘Your letters mentioned your unhappiness, dearest, but I never thought you’d be freed so soon. God punished him as he deserved.’ Realising how that sounded, she revised her words. ‘Oh, what am I saying? Now you’ve lost your freedom again and to a Dane. So cruel.’ The ice-blue eyes, so like Earl Thored’s, sparked with a rare anger. Elf had never been a wilful child—her calming influence on Fearn had been one of the most missed aspects of her absence. Fearn would never have hit a woman nor fought with a man if Elf had been there that day. Elf would have intervened to prevent it. Elegant and still slender, with a long braided plait of white-blonde hair, she was every inch the stuff of which queens were made and, at twenty-six, was the fecund mother of five children. Her letters to Fearn had indicated, more than once, that she loved her husband, Ethelred, who many men criticised for his indecisiveness. Fearn wanted to know if her declarations of love were true, or were her letters more diplomatic than heartfelt?
‘It’s the truth, Fearn. You have suffered at the hands of your man, but I have known nothing but tenderness from mine. Ethelred and I were both only seventeen when we were bonded, but our love has grown since then. I try to be a good wife to him. His troubles have increased since the Danes returned, yet he is reluctant to fight and lose men. He’d rather lose wealth than lives, yet whatever he does or doesn’t do is criticised. For my part, I give him what I can.’
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